Apple touted quite a few new iPhone features at
yesterday's OS 3.0 event, but now that the
beta build is trickling out, there's been a bevy of unearthed discoveries to further pique our interests. First up, the gang at
Boy Genius Report found an option to enable the "Find My iPhone" service in the
MobileMe settings. Unfortunately, that's all we've got, but we wouldn't put it past Cupertino to build some me.com-linked location tracker that'd be the envy of Orwell himself -- hey, that'd be pretty useful if you accidentally left the mobile in a taxi. Also in the MobileMe section, it now says Publish Video when you go to publish an image. It's an odd typo, to be sure, and while video recording has been near the top of our wishlist for some time, we're not about to get our hopes up. Finally,
Mac Rumors is reporting that a hacker has dug up and successfully activated the USB tethering capabilities. Apple's
Scott Forstall had mentioned the devs were building it in, but were still in talks with the carriers. As to whether any or all of these functions will actually end up in the final OS 3.0 build, your guess is a good as ours. For now, check out more pics of the MobileMe additions after the break.
[Thanks everyone who sent this in!]
Read - Find My iPhone
Read - USB Tethering
posted March 18th 2009 6:04PM
Hamidxa, saying something like that basically guarantees that you've never even used an iPhone for more than a few minutes. Tiny fonts (a HUGE issue for him), having to manually manage battery and performance draining background applications, the exact opposite of an intuitive user interface, and miniscule keyboards/buttons is quite possibly the worst nightmare(s) embodied in a phone for my 55 year old father. This is a guy that came from a several year old Sanyo flip phone he never even figured out texting on (after several attempts to teach him). I literally haven't had to help him ONCE with his iPhone and he's texting, Googling, taking/sending pictures through e-mail, downloading apps, and just started integrating his calendar into it.
Good luck finding me a WinMo phone that integrates with blood pressure and blood sugar monitors, and has as much potential and excitement from developers to create dozens of other devices within a few months. The iPhone offers a potential for profit for developers that no other mobile platform can touch and this reason alone basically guarantees that all the best devices will be created for it, and it alone.
He couldn't give a shit less what brand or device he's using. He has more loyalty to the brand of yogurt he eats than any manufacturer and if the iPhone didn't deliver as well as it did, he wouldn't be using it. He's not trying to impress anybody and has an incredibly low level of tolerance for bad design and functionality. The fact that he's taken so well to it says a lot in my opinion, but hey that's just because I know the guy.
Engadget has so many iphone news. Just put in a section... wasting my bandwidth.
Does posting a reply to a story you don't care about also count as wasting your bandwidth? Sure seems like it would to me.
Way to go, buddy!
does replying to a reply to a story that he didn't care about waste your bandwidth? sure seems like it would...
sarcastic words of encouragement
@patriotsn1 - Well maybe if he was also complaining about wasting his own bandwidth then yeah, you'd have a point. But he wasn't and you don't.
Maybe sarcasm just isn't your thing.
utahnkid.. simply trying to display that it is as equally annoying for people to express their annoyance with an annoyed poster about an article as it is for the original replier expressing his annoyance with an article. Now here you come and complicate things by expressing your annoyance of my annoyance of the annoyance of the originally annoyed about given article. Why do you have to confuse things?! maybe simplicity just isn't your thing.
Indeed. Apple have added almost as many features as Engadget have articles about the firmware upgrade.
WOW... this is all stuff that should have been included in the first place
Most of it is stuff I assumed it already had.
All of these extra features reaffirm my belief that they're going to introduce a new phone to go along with 3.0. I mean they obviously have to have another little show-and-tell to gloat about this stuff and if the video portion is true, I'm pretty sure they're going to ned some faster hardware to pull it off (I say this because I've seen what recorded video looks like on a jailbroken iPhone and it's not pretty). BTW does the recorded video look so bad because the dev team doesn't have full access to the processing power or something along those lines? I dunno just a thought. What do you guys think?
They would most probably have to enable video recording due to the new mms functionality, the iphone will be able to receive videos from other phones and store them locally, therefore it would not be hard at all to record videos in the same format and store them locally to be sent as mms. people will just have to be happy with the 3gp format, maybe apple will also include the mp4 format for higher res videos.
haha; Cancel or Allow.
what do you expect? allow or 'disallow'?
The very first thing I noticed too. It is just ironic that apple makes so much fuss over one question/answer then put in their newest gadget firmware.
@vian_brown
I expect apple to be creative!
I noticed that. The exact words they slammed Microsoft for using. Just kinda funny.
seems very similar to Nokia Webserver for the s60..
http://mymobilesite.net/
What about Flash?
flash is a bag of hurt :)
apparently adobe and apple are working on it
Flash will soon be replaced with the plug-in free far more efficient html5 and CSS3 which mobile safari already supports in addition to CSS 3d animations and transitions. In short, FUCK FLASH
that first picture is so Vista in reverse, Cancel or Allow... too funny.
I'm just waiting for the JoshTops editorial bashing of this pathethic software update. I can sort of understand why he wrote it, but it's a bit un-called for to make it the only story in the special box concerning Windows, while 50% of all the articles there are pure Apple worship.
Let's take a look at what Joshie hates about WinMo 6.5 and match it up to what we know about Iphone OS 3.0:
1: It's exactly the same as Windows Mobile 6... er, 5.
It's exactly the same as Iphone OS 2... er, 1.0
2: The interface improvements are still way behind the curve.
Most people here (including JT) agree that what we've seen from Palm Pre pretty much is the cutting edge of mobile interface. And that said, may I remind you that most of this OS is the exact same as it was in version 1.0.
3: The UI tweaks are mostly just skin deep, and third-parties have already gone way deeper.
Were there any UI tweaks in OS 3.0? Jailbroken phones certainly looks to satisfy more people, yet it is technically illegal. WinMo not only allows, it to a great part encourage third-party skins/modifications, ROM cooking, RegEdit, what have you. Iphone OS is a perfect example of "skin deep".
4: It doesn't support capacitive touchscreens.
Well, this is kind of an unfair point, since the Iphone OS is limited to one company and one screen only. They don't need to worry about the 1 billion chinese that prefer resistive screens. I admit the "ban" on capactive from WinMo is silly, but there are actually multiple operations that work better on a resistive with a stylus, such as copy/paste, drawing, quick notes etc.
5: It's not due out until "later this year."
Neither is this one, and may I mention that JT based much of this point on "word on the street".
6: You probably can't upgrade your phone.
Well, this is mainly because of the adding of the hardware start button, which is probably a preparation for WinMo 7.0. That said, Apple only have two mobile pone models, and one half of that cannot be upgraded. And if you have a Touch thing, the make you pay.
As a side note, I might add that JT first bashes the 6.5 for not adding anything new, then makes a point out of that you cannot upgrade to it.
7: No Zune integration. Not even a new Windows Media Player.
Now he's nit-picking. I think I could have come up with some equal silly complaints about the 3.0 if I had to write ten of them.
8: Where's the keyboard?
Josh is disappointed that WinMo doesn't improve it's landscape keyboard; the buttons are too small, and somehow it's Microsoft's fault that manufacturers make phones without a physical keyboard. The Iphone was without a keyboard from the start, yet landscape didn't show up until 3.0, and then only as a stretced, awkward version of the portrait, blocking out 2/3 of the screen.
Did I forget to mention that manufacturers are free to make whatever type of keyboard they want for WinMo? Exactly how many possibilities does Iphone have?
9: The browser is still weak.
It's a good point, but there are other possibilities for WinMo devices. Apple jumped a whole version number without any improvements to their browser. In my book, that's weaker than upping with 0.4 and making some improvements to the browser, wile at the same time allowing the user to install whatever browser he/she wants.
10: It doesn't innovate in any way.
Do I really have to comment on this one? Joshie's pièce de rèsistance. Most techie bloggers evidently doesn't look much to mobile innovation when the applaud copy/paste, MMS and voice recording as new features in 2009.
Sorry for the long post, but I had to get it off my chest. I know I can only hope and pray for a response from Joshua or any of the others, but I hope they take a glance into the mirror and stop for a second to think about what the precise hell they're up to.
Dear ihaters,
You people never stop blaming iphone, first you said there was no mms, sms forward, a2dp, copy/paste, tethering, a lot but now we got it and you are unable to digest this fact you are loosing for lame excuses.
I am very happy to see ihaters commenting it makes me so happy how popular iphone is and how much some people hate an iphone and waste their time by commenting here. So far I did not find any ilover commenting in winmo news like this because every1 knows winmo can not be a favorite and it can not be revolutionary…. You keep on blaming apple and apple keep on kicking ur @$$.
Now iphone got most of the common features along with unique and imagine what they can deliver in 2 to 3 years in os what we can do with iphone… now I can smell some smoke over there, omg some one’s @55 is burning… let it burn.
You forgot the: Windows Mobile 6.5 WILL NOT WORK ON CURRENT HARDWARE. Also you are wrong the the only 1/2 of the phones will be update able. But its pointless telling you any facts since your winmo rage is in full burn.
Hamidxa: As a former WinMobile user, accustomed to cooking custom ROMs (to maximize 'functionality'), I have to tell you that WinMo makes it SO hard to do it 'smoothly' that it's practically useless. After you use the iPhone OS, you feel that WinMo features and usability are like opposite poles of a magnet ... they just don't seem to come together (except for perhaps Windows Live Maps..)
I'm no apple fanboy (ok, I hate OS X's unusable interface) but the iPhone is head and shoulders above any single product out there. The Palm Pre is a good competitor (which is good) but Palm is cash strapped and Apple has both a head start as well as doing financially better. MS may put something good with WinMo 7, but as of now, Apple is a HUGE leader. In fact WinMo 7 has been delayed primarily to be more competitive with the iPhone OS (in terms of standardization of libraries and basic APIs as well as minimum h/w requirements).
Sure there may be a few things Apple was late in the market (no MMS till '09??) but *overall* it's leagues ahead of other phones. Just as WinMo 5 and 2003 were ahead of the curve back in 2004. 2012 may be different, but right now, Apple is the king.
are you hamidxa or are you responding to something he said?
Every time I've put down money on a WinMo phone, I've come to seriously regret it (the latest one was a HTC Touch Diamond)
The UI is clunky, it's meant to be used with a stylus (ever tried using a stylus on a phone while driving?) and it crashes all the time. In addition, any window takes a few seconds to come up. It's extremely annoying. The solution is to find third party ROMS and spend a whole weekend flashing to get performance remotely acceptable.
I've since moved on to Symbian phones which are at least stable and responsive, but the tethering on the IPhone is what I have been waiting for since day one. Now I can actually use it for work!
before getting an iPhone I had a Nokia N70 and I was quite thrilled with it. Very amazing thing, well designed, organized very well and above all quite functional --except when it came to loading/playing music/vids (that was a bag of hurt). But over all, I've always liked Nokia phones and I'm certain they will be able to compete very well in this new rat race. WinMo on the other hand, that thing is not going to be able to compete at all. At this point in time this is how I'd rank the leading phones:
> iPhone - most likely to succeed
> Pre - new kid on the block, may have potential, has to prove itself in the market
> Blackberries - very solid for messaging, business (but Storm needs to re-do from scratch)
> G1/Android - not gaining much traction at the moment, still needs to prove its potential
> Symbian - once reworked it could kick some serious @$$ all around
> WinMo - most likely to be NoMo
The interesting thing is these 6 are divided into 2 categories:
- Hardware and OS owned/developed by the same company (Apple, Palm, Blackberry, Nokia*.)
- OS developed to run in somebody else's hardware (MS, Android)
*Nokia belongs in the 1st category but when Symbian goes open source it will belong in the 2nd category.
The reason I group them this way is because that is who I think these phones are most likely to compete against. The one thing for sure is this competition is going to be heated and more entertaining to watch than the old Mac VS PC war of the last 2 decades. This is where MS will be exposed as the least capable to compete.
Hey I sent in a Find my iPhone screen from my iPhone, so I guess i'm an "everyone who sent this in"
@Shan - There have been two iPhones released. Sure, it makes sense that they would release a 3rd but you CAN NOT derive a 'pattern' of hardware releases from just 2.
Example:
What's the next number in this sequence?
17 3.14159265 _________
Can't do it! So stop telling people they are foolish for thinking there might not be a release. Your confidence is foolish.
A side note: fanboys justifying the no video as a battery issue (my favorite was that it was a security issue)...it still means it was poorly designed. The corvair was a beautiful car, in my opinion, but poorly designed. They traded the cool sucker factor for usefulness. And the next person that says, 'I'm glad it doesn't have flash' or 'flash is stupid and a waste' is going to get a boot to the head. In case you don't know, crawlers are starting to index flash sites as well, which means more and more websites will be flash only and you will be able to visit fewer and fewer websites. The iphone is a good device, it looks good and does 'some' cool things (now) but it is far from perfect or even the best and you guys need to get over your religious level of zealotry and admit it's just a damn phone. Seriously, some of you should be embarrassed.
I guess I deserve a boot, then, because I HATE Flash sites. Crawlers or not, they are generally unusable. Flash was cutting edge 8 years ago, when I was developing flash sites, but now, you can do a lot using web standards. Flash is great for "eye candy", banners, headers, and of course, streaming video, but to build a site around it is, in my opinion, short-sighted. >>UNLESS it is a very specific site for a very specific purpose. A gaming site for instance, that uses animated menus and the like to replicate the feel of the game.
To build an entire site of Flash makes it unusable in the modern computing world. What do you do with a flash menu system on a handheld? An iPhone or G1? A Nokia N95? Even a netbook? These screens are too small to do flash right. It either scales the animation down (making it illegible) or leaves it full size and forces you to scroll in every direction for basic navigation. Flash worked when everyone had a 15" CRT on their desk. Now, things need to be more flexible.
And don't get me started on accessibility....
Alright jimmy. Just give me an address and I'll fedex the boot to you. If you would be kind enough to hit yourself in the head with it, I would appreciate it. Thanks.
Just as many sites are built with a mobile version in html, so can they be done in flash. Most websites, sans mobile sites, are built with either 600 or 800px width in mind. Mobile sites less. A site built for mobile usage using flash can just as easily take advantage on the decreased screen size. It can also be pretty. I don't know many pure text sites that are pretty.
I know for a fact that most people, especially IPhone users, want pretty. The praise that the iphone aesthetics gets is monumental. So clearly 'eye candy' matters. I believe that Flash has the highest install base than any other plug in AND it's platform independent.
A flash site written for the mobile user is 1000 times more usable and appealing than a straight html/text site. This is simply a fact.
What web standards do you mean? Ajax? Javascript? HTML 5? You can get into some serious cross-browser issues with these as opposed to flash as a standard.
You said 'when I WAS developing flash sites'. I assume you don't anymore? Flash has continued to evolve. It's still pretty cool stuff.
Seriously, send me your boot size and I'll get that out right away.
Best,
KevinC
I'm thinking that maybe Apple wanted to release a revolutionary phone that did everything differently from other phones. And it did, but it also failed to include basic features that users expected, instead focusing on stuff that would set the iPhone ahead of the competition.
I agree 3.0 would have been included from the beginning, but actually it didn't have to for the iPhone to be revolutionary. Also, we still wouldn't have seen the first-gen iPhone if 3.0 was to ship with the device.
And now, in 2009, we can finally have both the revolutionary UI part and 2002's MMS tech and SMS forwarding as expected by users.
the presumption that 3.0 should've been there from the start is false. Only because, out of the 1000 new APIs and 100 new user features, it delivered support for 3 things that were considered basic it doesn't invalidate the rest of new, useful innovations.
The 3 things considered basic, now delivered:
MMS
Cut/Copy/Paste
Stereo Bluetooh
I'm very glad these things took the backseat (because I hardly have a need for them) over far more useful things like having the best mobile browser (which I use every single day).
Any word on whether Chinese input (pinyin) is improved at all? Not only is the prediction terrible compared to any desktop equivalent, but it is also just a little clumsy all around. I work in China and some Chinese friends have an Iphone which they don't use as a phone at all because texting is relatively worthless for someone who wants to input characters quickly (fortunately not me).
Still no video :P
When they say that bluetooth is unlocked, do they just mean you have access to it or are they actually providing proper profiles? For example can you beam a contact to someone else using any bluetooth phone or is this just still iphone to iphone?
There just talking about applications can finally use it.
@Ram
I own and iPhone... and I don't think its the greatest device in the world.I'm not a hater either. I'm happy its addressed most of the concerns (or will try in 3.0), but the reality is, its should have had most of them in the begining. Its still missing some very basic features my dumb phones (moto razr, lg chocolate, moto e398) and smartphones (moto Q, BB curve) had:
Multiple profiles, Video Recording,Camera with flash and zoom,Massive Storage Support, Blacklist and whitelist,etc...
Long Story short, i think or at least hope the pre addresses some of these issues.. maybe I'll come back to the iPhone when its version 5 or 6. You know once its grown up. I'm tired of waiting for things that should have been built in from the very begining.
AM I the only one thinking vista in that first picture?